To Landers' way of thinking, eating invaders is ethical eating. It removes unwanted animals; it absolves consumers from factory farming cruelty.

This idea is certainly relevant to our region. This area is Invasive Species Central. The last time I checked, it teemed with over 250 "alien species."

It's as if God turned Noah's ark upside down over our part of the world and shook it.

Some of these invaders stowed away on ships that visited the port. That's how you got Chinese mitten crabs scuttling over levees into northside pools.

Others technically are not invasive but introduced. Often introducers seek to improve nature. Like the Einstein who brought water hyacinth to the Delta.

Still others are non-native but here anyway, like birds that change their flyways. The Eurasian collared dove likely arrived this way.

These creatures all flourish here. Some are outright ecological disasters. But not to worry. All can be tossed on the barbeque. Or mixed into a salad.

Starlings are a classic example. Starlings were introduced to North America by an ecologically impaired guy who thought all birds mentioned in Shakespeare should live here, too. Starlings attack other bird nests. Killing babies, they take over the nest, muscling out native species. Huge, swirling flocks of starlings descend on vineyards in Lodi and Amador. Growers consider them a scourge.

No problem. Eat them, says Hank Shaw.

An Orangevale wild food expert, Shaw wrote the forward to "Eating Aliens." His website, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, is a leading wild food website.

"Dark meat, like duck, perfectly good," Shaw, a former Record reporter, said of the taste of starling.

How to cook it? "Small birds don't have a lot of analogs in American cooking," Shaw replied. "But they are very popular in European cooking. A similar bird Italians put up on spit like a kebab, and roast over a wood fire. Best roasted whole."

Washing starling down with a Lodi zinfandel will round out the locavore experience.

Ken Albala, food history professor at University of the Pacific, agrees eating invasive species makes sense.

"There's no reason for me to play by the industrial rules and eat this cruelly produced meat," Albala said. "You could even say cruelly produced vegetables, if you think about who actually harvests them and the conditions they're living in. How can I call this a moral choice? Foraging and hunting solve this problem nicely."

One caution: Bagging birds with shotgun and birdshot requires a trip to the country, as it is illegal to discharge a firearm in Stockton. Pause for laughter.

That said, the wild turkeys in this area are introduced species. And Thanksgiving is just around the corner.